US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2012 [Getty Images]

The rise of China and India as major world powers and how they view their relationship with the West promises to test the established global order, according to a US think-tank.

In the coming decades, “as the two powers grow, they are bound to change the current international system-with profound implications for themselves, the US, and the world,” says a new publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a US foreign policy think-tank with historical ties to the US state.

“And whether they agree on the changes to be made, especially when it comes to their relationship with the West, will influence the system’s future character,” says the publication, Crux of Asia: China, India, and the Emerging Global Order.

“China and India’s sustained economic growth fuels their increasing geopolitical and military influence,” says the publication.

Trade figures from 2011 reveal China has long overtaken the US as a leading trading partner in the world.

Around 124 countries consider China their largest trading partner and only 76 countries have the US as their largest trading partner.

China grew at 7.2 per cent in 2012 with growth projections for 2013 being 8.6 per cent according to HSBC.

“We are moving away from a US-or Europe-led world to a world led by China,” Stephen King, HSBC’s chief economist, wrote in an Emerging Markets Index report published yesterday.

“China will make its biggest-ever contribution to global growth in 2014,” King said, in what he termed a “great rotation”.

The Chief Economist of the World Bank, Kaushik Basu has forecast a six per cent growth for India in 2013.

Though being below its long-term averages the two countries growth looked much healthier than the EU, where Eurostat – the region’s key statistics service – projects its GDP plunge to – 0.3 per cent in 2012.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.